Although each celebrity is a dynamic person, when we slap their images on the cover of magazines, they are each posed the same way: suggestively positioning, revealing attire, and, almost always, an element of Photoshop. Though it is but a single image, we equate the sex they exude in that photograph with their entire being, as if they maintain that level of sex and beauty in all that they do. In essence, we forget they are human.

To help reconcile the difference between the attractiveness we see when we look at celebrities and the lack of attractiveness we see when we look at ourselves, Gracie Hagen created a photo series entitled “Illusions of the Body.” To do this, she recruited men and women to pose nude first in a conventionally sexy pose and second in a pose that does not seem flattering. This duo allows us to break the illusion that bodies are either sexy or not sexy. It is merely a matter of presentation.

“The media shows us the most attractive photos of people,” Hagen explained. “Don’t compare yourselves to those images. They aren’t realistic. Everyone is a different shape and size. There is no ‘normal.’ Celebrate your shapes, sizes, and the odd contortions your body can get itself into. The human body is a weird and beautiful thing.”